Conflicts of interest

 Are of no interest to the man and the boss who do not care that ny const art 1 sec 3 confers rights on New Yorkers

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He's Prosecuted Pirates and Arms Dealers. Now He'll Advise Eric ...

Dec 17, 2021 — Brendan McGuire, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan who ran an anti-corruption unit, will be Mr. Adams's chief 

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Home > LI Confidential > Stop scratching on holidays

Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012

Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.

The New York Times

He’s Prosecuted Pirates and Arms Dealers. Now He’ll Advise Eric Adams.

Brendan McGuire, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan who ran an anti-corruption unit, will be Mr. Adams’s chief counsel.

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Brendan McGuire, a former federal prosecutor, was an adviser to Eric Adams during his mayoral campaign and his transition.Credit...Sasha Maslov for The New York Times

By Benjamin Weiser and William K. Rashbaum

Dec. 17, 2021

In his storied career as a federal prosecutor, Brendan R. McGuire helped put away a notorious Russian arms dealer and a Somali pirate, not to mention a string of unscrupulous public officials.

After a five-year stint as a partner in the law firm WilmerHale’s white-collar practice, Mr. McGuire will return to the public sector in January, when he will begin serving as chief counsel to Eric Adams when he becomes mayor.

“I thank Brendan for agreeing to serve in this administration,” Mr. Adams said in a statement late on Thursday, adding that he wanted advisers who were independent thinkers, had impeccable judgment and were “willing to provide me with their candid advice.”

Mr. Adams said on Friday that he also intended to nominate Jocelyn E. Strauber, who, like Mr. McGuire, worked in the Southern District as a prosecutor, to lead the city’s Department of Investigation. The agency is responsible for investigating municipal corruption, including allegations of fraud and other misconduct by city employees.

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“As a proven investigator, prosecutor, and defense attorney, she has the character, judgment, and skills needed for this critically important role,” Mr. Adams said in a statement.

Ms. Strauber, now a partner at the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in New York, said she looked forward to “leading the dedicated professionals who work every day to protect and preserve integrity in government, a mission of unparalleled importance.” As a potential commissioner, she must go before the City Council for confirmation.

Mr. Adams, a retired city police officer, a former state senator and the current Brooklyn borough president, has fended off criticism in the past that his fund-raising has, at times, tested the boundaries of campaign-finance and ethics laws. He has never been formally accused of wrongdoing.

In a statement to The New York Times in May, he said Black candidates for office were often held “to a higher, unfair standard — especially those from lower-income backgrounds such as myself.”

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He said no campaign of his had ever been charged with “a serious fund-raising violation, and no contribution has ever affected my decision-making as a public official — yet I am still being cross-examined for accusations made and answered more than a decade ago.”

Mr. McGuire, 45, who served as an adviser to Mr. Adams during his campaign and his transition, said in an interview late Thursday that Mr. Adams had reached out to him through a mutual friend shortly after winning the mayoral primary in June to discuss his vision for his office. Mr. Adams asked Mr. McGuire if he was interested in joining his transition and potentially his administration.

“I think that what was attractive to me was his focus on wanting to ensure that the city government operated in the right way while attempting to make a big difference in the lives of New Yorkers,” Mr. McGuire said.

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Mr. McGuire said Mr. Adams also made it clear that it was important to him that Mr. McGuire have direct access to him.

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“I think it demonstrates a real understanding of the current environment and the importance of good government that he’s sought out someone with my profile,” Mr. McGuire said.

Mr. McGuire was born in Manhattan, and is a graduate of Regis High School, Williams College and New York University School of Law. He has deep roots in New York law enforcement: His grandfather, James McGuire, spent more than four decades with the New York Police Department, and his father, Robert J. McGuire, served six years as the police commissioner under Mayor Edward I. Koch.

During his nearly 11 years in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, Mr. McGuire oversaw teams of prosecutors that investigated and brought public corruption cases and, later, terrorism and national security cases.

In those posts, he oversaw the prosecutions of more than a half-dozen former elected city and state officials, including Bronx councilman Larry B. Seabrook and State Senator Carl Krugerof Brooklyn, both Democrats. As a prosecutor, he also helped to win the convictions of Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani immigrant who tried unsuccessfully to detonate a car bomb in Times Square in 2010, and of Viktor Bout, a Russian businessman accused of running an international arms-trafficking network.

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While Mr. McGuire ran the Southern District’s anti-corruption unit, he also oversaw the prosecution of three businessmen who were convicted in 2013 of defrauding New York City of hundreds of millions of dollars in the so-called CityTime case.

N.Y.C. Mayor Eric Adams’s New Administration

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Schools Chancellor: David Banks. The longtime New York City educator, who rose to prominence after creating a network of public all-boys schools, takes the lead at the nation’s largest public school system as it struggles to emerge from the pandemic.

Police Commissioner: Keechant Sewell. The Nassau County chief of detectives becomes New York City’s first female police commissioner, taking over the nation’s largest police force amid ​​a crisis of trust in American policing and a troubling rise in violence.

Commissioner of Correction Department: Louis Molina. ​​The former N.Y.P.D. officer, who was the chief of the Las Vegas public safety department, is tasked with leading the city’s embattled Correction Department and restoring order at the troubled Rikers Island jail complex.

Chief Counsel: Brendan McGuire. ​​After a stint as a partner in a law firm’s white-collar practice, the former federal prosecutor returns to the public sector to advise the mayor on legal matters involving City Hall, the executive staff and administrative matters.

Transportation Commissioner: Ydanis Rodriguez. ​​The Manhattan council member is a trusted ally of Mr. Adams. Mr. Rodriguez will face major challenges in his new role: In 2021, traffic deaths in the city soared to their highest level since 2013, partly due to speeding and reckless driving.

Health Commissioner: Dr. Ashwin Vasan. Dr. Dave A. Chokshi, the current commissioner, stays in the role to provide continuity to the city’s pandemic response. In mid-March, Dr. Vasan, the president of a mental health and public health charity, will take over.

Deputy mayors. ​​Mr. Adams announced five women as deputy mayors, including Lorraine Grillo as his top deputy. Philip Banks III, a former N.Y.P.D. chief who resigned while under federal investigation in 2014, later announced his own appointment as deputy mayor for public safety.

Executive director of mayoral security: Bernard Adams. Amid concerns of nepotism, Mayor Adams’s brother, who is a retired police sergeant, will oversee mayoral security after he was originally named as deputy police commissioner.

Preet Bharara, who served as the United States attorney for the Southern District from 2009 to 2017, and who supervised Mr. McGuire when he headed the public corruption and terrorism units, praised the appointment, stressing the lawyer’s integrity, intelligence and leadership skills.

“He’s that rare lawyer who understands both the forest and the trees,” Mr. Bharara said in a telephone interview. “Given his background, I would expect that Brendan will be one of the people responsible for making sure that the government is transparent and ethical, which is what the people of the City of New York deserve.”

The chief counsel typically advises the mayor on legal matters involving City Hall and the executive staff, and on legal aspects of administration policy and administrative matters.

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Some decisions can be fraught: In 2016, Maya Wiley, then the counsel to the mayor, argued that Mayor Bill de Blasio’s email communications with certain outside advisers were protected because the advisers were acting as “agents of the city.” Thousands of pages of those emails were eventually released, in what became an embarrassing episode for the mayor.

Mr. Bharara’s office investigated Mr. de Blasio for two years, focusing on campaign finance irregularities, but in 2017 the office ultimately declined to bring charges. Mr. de Blasio said at the time that he had acted appropriately. Mr. McGuire said in the interview that he had no involvement in that investigation.

Mr. Bharara noted that Mr. McGuire would take his new position at a time when some areas of city government were in disarray.

“One challenge may be straightening out sprawling city bureaucracies that may not have been well-managed by the current mayor,” Mr. Bharara said.

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Indeed, Mr. McGuire, in an essay in The Daily News in March, may have given a prescient summary of the challenges that may await him. He wrote that while most public officials in New York do their jobs honestly, “too many have crossed ethical and legal lines to our collective detriment.”

“Our confidence in the ability of government to get things done, to nurture transformative, forward-looking ideas, and to keep us safe, has never been lower,” he wrote.

Benjamin Weiser is a reporter covering the Manhattan federal courts. He has long covered criminal justice, both as a beat and investigative reporter. Before joining The Times in 1997, he worked at The Washington Post. @BenWeiserNYT

William K. Rashbaum is a senior writer on the Metro desk, where he covers political and municipal corruption, courts, terrorism and law enforcement. He was a part of the team awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News. @WRashbaum • Facebook